


this side of paradise

by lackingsoy



Category: Code Geass
Genre: Blood and Injury, CC is an immortal, Established Relationship, Geass, Gen, M/M, Not Canon Compliant, Suzaku Joins the BK AU, in case you forgot how much cool shit that entails, incorrect first aid probably, like knowing DEAD LANGUAGES, she's a walking encyclopedia, used as a kind of medical intervention
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-08-05
Updated: 2020-08-05
Packaged: 2021-03-05 22:16:09
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,316
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25732717
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lackingsoy/pseuds/lackingsoy
Summary: "Why did you use that command?" Suzaku said. They stepped out of the garage and into the sun, a dark jet fast approaching in the distance. The boy had begun to exhaust himself, blood becoming apparent through the thickness of the bandage. Lelouch looked over at him. Or, his helmet did. Turned and faced him in an impression of a blank stare."Three minutes," Zero said.
Relationships: C.C. & Kururugi Suzaku & Lelouch Lamperouge | Lelouch vi Britannia, Kouzuki Kallen & Lelouch Lamperouge | Lelouch vi Britannia, Kururugi Suzaku/Lelouch Lamperouge | Lelouch vi Britannia
Comments: 7
Kudos: 92





	this side of paradise

**Author's Note:**

> just a morning writing exercise. *slaps the roof of this fic* this baby can fit so many headcanons in it! CC is dope as hell

It was a basic start to a prolonged campaign. A simple operation; get in, destroy the Refrain, capture a potential informant, get out. Mission accomplished.

The ground zero location was a secluded spot hanging on the hinges of the Bay Area; guards were rotated out in 12-hour shifts and were often found dozing on the job during stakeouts. It'd be easy enough to capture and interrogate one or the lot of them, whomever was unfortunate enough to be on grounds while they launched their assault.

They'd continue taking out scheduled shipments until they cleaned out the entirety of the Bay Area. No Knightmares were authorized for use--too loud and costly, like blaring a horn--just a few nondescript cars and eight personally selected people, including Suzaku.

Kallen had insisted on coming. Then CC scoffed at her and said that the base needed an interim leader, fool. Then Kallen had looked struck, the realization like a punch, and Suzaku had barely managed to hide his smile behind a hand before she turned on Zero.

"Are you sure?" She said, as if she hadn't been the only possible choice: level-headed, steel-like, and formidable in battle and strategy. She was a major source of camaraderie among the Black Knights; everybody knew her name. Loved to chant it. The choice, Lelouch had told Suzaku over the spread of their bed, was made before he could even consider it.

Lelouch laughed, the sound crackling through his modulator. "Nobody else is as fit for the role as you are, Kallen Kozuki." Zero's standard voice was deep and harsh, but it cut a gentle-like tone then, as soft as a symbol could get in the company of its beholders. A corner to CC's lips lifted.

Kallen smiled, fierce and sharp. "I won't let you down."

"You won't." The sound of a smile.

They set off, taking only essentials. Zero allowed guns for self-defense only, to incapacitate enemies posing as active obstacles. No firing to kill. That was the rule, and the Black Knights followed it down to the letter.

Until the shrill shout of a gunshot, and a scream. A high screech--a child's one.

They found him face up on the ground, obviously shot, and Toru Yoshida, kneeling by his side. The child's chest rose in erratic patterns; the smell of blood strong and pungent. A boy by the age of ten or eleven, clothed in ratty clothes. Japanese. Probably from a nearby squatter settlement. Suzaku swallowed his misgivings and knelt, looking for a wound. It was dark, ripped across the skin of the child's thigh. A graze. He yanked off his cape and pressed down on it.

"What happened?" Lelouch, to Toru. Suzaku looked: Toru's eyes were green-blue with fear uncharacteristic of a veteran. 

"There wasn't supposed to be any civilians on scene." Only the barest hint of a tremor ran through his voice. He pressed his hands together. Suzaku looked beyond his shoulder and saw the gun some feet away, cast off in a moment of panic. "I shot thinking it was a guard. It wasn't." Toru stared down at the body of a child. 

"Fool," Zero said. He crouched down, cape swept behind him with a long arm. "Hey there," murmured to the child, modulator tempering what would have otherwise been a soft sound, and Suzaku thought it was kind of sad: Zero's long, looming contour, leaning over something so weak. The boy's eyes slowly dragged open, as if about to fall asleep. He was so young, cheeks speckled with unwashed dirt and hollowed from malnourishment.

"Well?" Lelouch said, the question directed at Suzaku. He dragged his eyes away from the child's tiny, bloody shape, to Zero's mask. "He wasn't hit any vital areas, I don't think." His knowledge with first aid was mostly limited to backroom self-surgeries, painkillers, and sheer grit, but Suzaku knew Toru could handle a firearm; he had shot to maim, maybe, but not to extinguish a life. "We should take him back with us; he's losing a lot of blood."

Behind them, Toru murmured a hasty prayer. Zero's head snapped up, and despite the helmet Suzaku could easily imagine the glare. The man slid back a step as if to agree.

"Listen very closely now, Yoshida: I want you to join up with the others and tell CC to activate emergency code 56. Tell her I want everything set up at base by the time I arrive in seven minutes." Zero leaned forward. Anger showed well through the strained line of his throat, the evening of his high shoulders. "Am I clear?"

"Yes. Zero, Sir," Toru looked both relieved and properly chastised. "I'm sor-"

"You butchered a major operation within the first twenty minutes. Don't waste your breath on apologies."

He left without another word.

When Lelouch turned back, Suzaku had ripped a part of his cape, tying it into a makeshift bind of a bandage around the child's leg, the pubescent circumference convenient. He only needed to wrap around the boy's thigh once to secure the pressure in place. 

"Can you carry him?" Lelouch asked. Suzaku nodded, numbed to the rust in the air, smeared over his fingertips. Lelouch took a shallow breath that sounded like a wheeze through the modulator. "Good." The panel to his left eye slid open, and dark lavender appeared. Lelouch slid one gloved hand carefully beneath the child's neck and tilted his face up, gentle, and the boy's eyes slid open. They were very brown.

"Everything will be over soon," Lelouch's voice crackled quietly. Red curled like a bird in the bead of his eye. "Stay Alive."

Suzaku could see the exact moment the child's brain and body registered the command. A faint shiver racked the short length of his body, his eyes flaring open, rimmed bright red. 

The trace of fire. A sign of life, Suzaku understood. The boy took a shuddering breath and let loose a mangled scream. "It hurts!" He shouted. His eyes burned. His teeth chattered and slammed past his tongue as he reached up, tiny hands grabbing at air. "Mama, it hurts!"

Suzaku gave Lelouch a look over the now fitfully struggling blur of limbs and legs. A shoe kicked out near his face. Lelouch merely tilted his mask at him, reflection innocuous and panel slid back into place.

"Five minutes," Zero said. Suzaku lifted the boy into his arms and dragged him to his chest, trying at the same time to constrain the boy's flailing and not putting excessive pressure on any one part of his body. Children were too breakable. He thought, suddenly, of Lelouch's indignant anger and his scraped knees and black shoes.

"Why did you use that command?" Suzaku said. They stepped out of the garage and into the sun, a dark jet fast approaching in the distance. The boy had begun to exhaust himself, blood becoming apparent through the thickness of the bandage. Lelouch looked over at him. Or, his helmet did. Turned and faced him in an impression of a blank stare.

"Three minutes," Zero said.

Suzaku swallowed and cradled the child, swaying him back and forth, and continued: "Why not use what you used on me?"

The jet touched down, wings whirring, and they stood back, blasted by the wind's fierce pressure. 

"I'm forcing him to stay awake." It was not a direct answer, but Suzaku had expected less. Lelouch looked at the child in Suzaku's arms, his struggling fainter now, strained, but it was there. "It's a gamble. If we don't make it back on time, he might die from all the expedited blood loss. But if we do make it, he won't have died somewhere along the way, in his sleep." 

"That's a pretty big gamble," Suzaku said, somewhat weakly. CC appeared on the lowered walkway, bright hair streaming loose in the wind. She had a hand up, one finger pointing skyward. 

"Wanting to live always is," Lelouch nudged them both forward, palm briefly grazing the dirt off the child's cheek. "One minute."

"I've got one doctor on board, so your conscience is safe for a time." CC leveled them both unimpressed looks as they came to a stop before her. "The rest are back at HQ." Her eyes flicked down to the boy against Suzaku's chest and he thought he saw her eyes go carefully blank. "You can't go a day without the Fates coming down on you, can you." 

"Human error," Lelouch returned. "The operation is off until we save the child." 

She slid her gaze to him. "I know." CC faced Suzaku and held out two hands. "I'll take care of things from here, lover boy." He didn't bristle at the nickname. She used it off and on for months now, an occasional addition that made Lelouch smirk. For the way it made Suzaku's face twist up, Lelouch told him.

Suzaku passed the child off into CC's waiting arms and the boy stopped struggling the second he looked up. Suzaku didn't know what the child saw there in CC's face that made him go so utterly still, so completely quiet.

CC was humming something strange. A dead tongue, she told them once, when they found her recording her own voice on an outdated tape, playing it back to fill the room with a mausoleum of a forgotten language. A song made of dirt, a sentence filled with rivers, a lullaby for the graves. 

"The younger ones always know how old I am." Her eyes were a molten gold, so deep and inconceivable that Suzaku was sure that no one saw the same thing upon looking in. "The children and the animals," and her mouth formed a wordless shape and slipped back into centuries of lost sound. Lelouch and Suzaku watched her turn away, the child lucid and motionless in her grip. She disappeared swiftly into the inner chambers. 

A silence stayed between them after she was gone. The walkway collected itself and the vehicle shuddered as they prepared for take-off. Zero's helmet released.

Lelouch shook out his matted hair, dark eyebrows and sweat down his temples. 

"Sometimes I'd very much like to pick at her brain and try my damnedest to write it all down," he murmured.

"You'll die trying," Suzaku said, and felt sick the only way one could be in the presence of a world-old being. A cool touch at his chin drew him back. Lelouch's eyes peered down at him like seashells at dusk. He'd taken off his gloves, helmet tucked under an arm.

The jet's comms relayed a lift-off warning and then the engines crackled; Suzaku groped for a handhold on the wall and they grabbed one another as the plane rose in altitude, vertigo skittering violently through them before the jet's trajectory finally smoothed over. 

"You asked me why I didn't just command the boy to Live."

They were leaned into each other. Lelouch's voice was quiet against Suzaku's neck. "Give me an educated guess."

"It was a calculated choice." Suzaku looked down; his gloves had left dull smears of red in echoes of handprints on the sides of Lelouch's cape. Lelouch hummed, a finger tracing Suzaku's cheekbone, gliding upward. "You wanted to buy time." 

"And?" Expectant.

"And," Suzaku swallowed the distant urge to touch him, to hold him, despite his bloodied hands. "It wasn't what you told me. That was important: it couldn't be the same." A dull thud; Zero's helmet rolled to a stop between their boots. Lelouch's hands flitting down and over Suzaku's chest, waist, lower back.

Mostly, Suzaku tried not to shudder. He did not try very hard as he said, "Nobody could touch what was ours."

Lelouch laughed a low and pleased sound into the skin of Suzaku's throat. Suzaku felt his own lips curl. "You chose something similar enough to have the same effect but different enough so that it wouldn't be redundant. So it wouldn't come near the Geass you placed on me."

He hadn't shaved in weeks, stubble scratching across his lower face. Lelouch's lips mouthed at it. Suzaku ducked down to catch him at the seams.

"You're awfully possessive," Suzaku murmured, pinning the words to the edge of Lelouch's mouth.

"Feel special yet?" Lelouch whispered, and Suzaku took him again, licking into his mouth. Lelouch let him, just as he let Suzaku press two hands flat by his head and crush him very carefully into the line of the wall. Suzaku sank, and felt his fingers curl against the cool metal. Lelouch hummed a breathless sound into their press of lips, and eventually took his hands off Suzaku's waist, pressing him back with a thumb.

"Touch me," he commanded, feeling for Suzaku's wrists, taking Suzaku's hands down to settle on the jut of his hipbones. But Suzaku held off, feeling acutely the stain of blood over his hands, hovering just over the fabric. 

"I'm dirty," he said, as a way of simultaneous explanation and protest, and Lelouch stared him down through a mixture of annoyance and desire.

"I don't care," Lelouch said, and yanked him forward so that their lips collided in a fleeting flash of hurt and Suzaku's hands glanced off of Lelouch's fingers. They stayed sealed together, tongues gliding, blood drying between them, until Lelouch broke away with a hiss, raising a smeared hand. His eyes gleamed. "Neither of us are clean, Suzaku. We can't be bothered to be." He pressed a thumb underneath Suzaku's eye and swept across in one neat motion. Suzaku knew blood would be smudged there, seared into place like a brand.

"We aren't really redeemable. Saving a child won't change that. Cleaning out all the Refrain in the country won't, either, and neither would rehabilitating all its users."

When Lelouch came back down on him, hands besmirched and smile unforgiving, Suzaku felt the stinging bite behind his teeth. "I am the man who told you to _Live,_ after all."


End file.
